Quotes from Mary Oliver

I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.

Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?

It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.

I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion - that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books - can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.

maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us--

Praying It doesn't have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate, this isn't a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.

So every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. --from WHEN DEATH COMES

Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.

And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?

the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own

I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us...

But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive.

A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.

In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.

From the complications of loving you I think there is no end or return. No answer, no coming out of it. Which is the only way to love, isn't it? This isn't a play ground, this is earth, our heaven, for a while. Therefore I have given precedence to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods that hold you in the center of my world. And I say to my body: grow thinner still. And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song. And I say to my heart: rave on.

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.

There are things you can't reach. But You can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god. And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier. I look; morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around As though with your arms open.

The Old Poets Of China Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say Look! and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.